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Reviews for Carrie Goes Off The Map
"Quirky and fun, Carrie Goes Off the Map is a pleasant mix of beach read and Brit chick lit... an appealing and realistic male lead, whose eyes will smolder even for the reader."
- RT Reviews
"...engaging and very English contemporary romance….Ashley's charming prose makes the journey enjoyable."
- Publishers Weekly
Read an excerpt from Carrie Goes Off The Map
Visit Phillipa Ashley's web site
Enter Phillipa's Carrie Goes Off The Map Contest
About Phillipa Ashley British author, Phillipa Ashley, loves writing lively, sexy, funny romantic fiction. After studying English at Oxford University, she worked as a copywriter and journalist.
Her first novel, Decent Exposure -- titled Dating Mr. December for the US - won the Romantic Novelists Association New Writers Award. It was filmed as a Lifetime TV movie called 12 Men of Christmas starring Kristin Chenoweth and Josh Hopkins.
Phillipa lives in an English village with her husband and daughter and loves Jane Austen, hiking and boogie boarding.
Also by Phillipa Ashley
Decent Exposure aka Dating Mr December (USA)
Wish You Were Here
It Should Have Been Me aka Carrie Goes off the Map (USA)
Fever Cure
Just Say Yes
An Interview with Phillipa Ashley
By Holly Hewson for The Romance Studio
HH: Phillipa, thank you for talking with us at TRS! Your featured book is Carrie Goes Off The Map. Where did you get the idea for this charming story PA: The original idea came to me when I heard the old Yvonne Fair song, It Should Have Been Me, on the radio one morning. That's the one where the jilted bride stands up in the church and objects when her ex tries to marry another woman! I wondered what sort of broken relationship would drive a woman to those lengths. A road trip seemed the perfect way for Carrie -- and Matt -- to spend time together and maybe find a new path in life.
HH: What do you like best about Carrie and why will readers relate to her? PA: She's a realistic woman with believable flaws, and I hope readers will respond to that. Sometimes, writers say their heroines have flaws but I'm reading the story and the heroine is acting like a saint, 'staying positive and strong' etc I know that's what we should do but if I'd been Carrie, losing my fiancé, home and livelihood in one night, I wouldn't react like that and neither would most of the women I know! Carrie is quite a drama queen anyway, and I guessed she would be angry, disillusioned and feel she'd lost her whole sense of purpose and direction in life. It's her journey onwards and upwards to a new life that was so exciting, fun and moving to write.
HH: What do you like best about Matt and why will readers love him? PA: Ah, Matt. I've had such a great reaction to him and (whisper) he's the favourite hero I've ever written. He's realistic too; a doctor who's seen it all in his work with a charity. He's world-weary, sardonic and won't take any nonsense from Carrie, while underneath, he wants to help her so much even though he's hiding some very raw scars of his own. He's also absolutely drop dead gorgeous and one woman in the book describes him as a 'dirty Mr Darcy' which about sums him up!
HH: What draws today's readers to the romance genre in your opinion? PA: I think it's a combination of wanting an escape from a tough old world -- yet also wanting to identify with universal emotions and desires. Romance is real life, only bigger and better!
HH: What else do you have in store for lucky readers? PA: Two new books in summer 2012. A US print and e-book edition of Just Say Yes, my next rom com published by Sourcebooks and a worldwide print edition of my sexy romance -- Fever Cure -- from Samhain.
HH: What's a day in the life of author Phillipa Ashley like? PA: I tend to get up early and work on a novel and then move onto to my day job as a commercial copy writer. Late afternoon I go for a swim or work out and then I write some more of my novels, until my husband comes home. That's our time.
HH: What goals have you set for yourself at this point in your career? PA: I've just written a new longer rom(antic) com(edy) and I'd like to write some more sexy romances.
HH: What are you reading at the moment? PA: Wild Heat by Bella Andre.
HH: Where is your favorite place to shop for books? PA: Anywhere! I do love shopping for books in Oxford which is where the opening of Carrie Goes off the Map is set. I went to university there and it has fantastic bookshops -- three enormous ones and lots of tiny second hand, specialist stores.
HH: Any special plans for the holidays this year? PA: On Christmas Day, we get together with my daughter, who's a student, and both sets of parents here at our home. I love having everyone around the dining table and we all share the preparation and cooking. My mum gets the turkey and my husband's father grows all the vegetables in his own garden. I drink the Champagne!
HH: Thank you!
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